Beyond the Hype

In this episode, Oliver Cronk is joined by Technology Lead Andrew Carr and CTO Colin Eberhardt to delve into the evolving nature of technology strategy within organisations. As technological advancements accelerate, they question the relevance of a traditional long-term technology strategy and whether it has become an industry buzzword in itself. They explore the annual ritual of tech predictions and strategic planning, and whether it is practical or performative. They also debate the balance between addressing technical debt and fostering innovation, the influence of analyst-driven hype, and the critical decision of buy versus build. There's a lot of hype to navigate around, but they bring their range of experiences to bear in providing a nuanced perspective on how to create effective technology strategies that genuinely add value – by aligning technology strategies with business goals. Links from this episode How to build an effective technical strategy – LeadDev Better than a secret weapon: 5 steps to a winning technology skills strategy – TechUK The Tech:Forward recipe for a successful technology transformation – McKinsey

In this episode, Oliver Cronk, Doro Hinrichs and Kira Clark from Scott Logic are joined by Peter Gostev, Head of AI at Moonpig. Together, they explore whether we can ever really trust and secure Generative AI (GenAI), while sharing stories from the front line about getting to grips with this rapidly evolving technology. With its human-like, non-deterministic nature, GenAI frustrates traditional pass/fail approaches to software testing. The panellists explore ways to tackle this, and discuss Scott Logic's Spy Logic project which helps development teams investigate defensive measures against prompt injection attacks on a Large Language Model. Looking to the future, they ask whether risk mitigation measures will ever be effective – and what impact this will have on product and service design – before offering pragmatic advice on what organisations can do to navigate this terrain. Links from this episode Prompt injection explained, with video, slides, and a transcript – Simon Willison's Weblog Spy Logic on GitHub Spy Logic – Doro Hinrichs and Heather Logan How the tables turned – My life with Spy Logic – Kira Clark

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by Jess McEvoy and Peter Chamberlin, who have both spent many years in senior roles within public sector organisations. Their conversation covers the excitement and concerns around AI, both from a citizen's perspective and for those building public services. They discuss the UK government's approach to addressing AI challenges with its pro-innovation mantra, and whether this creates the right environment for success. They also touch on the need for global cooperation when tackling what are increasingly becoming global challenges. Links from this episode A guide to using artificial intelligence in the public sector National AI Strategy (PDF) A pro-innovation approach to AI Prime Minister's speech on AI: 26 October 2023 The Bletchley Declaration – November 2023 Policy implications of artificial intelligence (AI) A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation: government response AI Safety Institute - Third progress report

In this episode, Oliver Cronk is joined by experts including Jeremy Axe, Group CTO at DS Smith, and consultants Darren Smith and Katie Davis from Scott Logic. Together, they unpack topics like the energy usage and carbon emissions of IT infrastructure, the challenges in accurately measuring sustainability, and whether claims of 'green tech' are substantiated or just hype. The conversation covers the nuances around operational versus embodied carbon emissions, the sustainability trade-offs involved in cloud versus on-premises hosting, and the need for transparency and standards around eco-friendly tech claims. Links from the podcast Proposed Technology Carbon Standard – open sourced by Scott Logic under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence Scott Logic blog posts on Sustainability – including the Conscientious Computing series DS Smith's approach to sustainability Scott Logic's approach to supporting technology sustainability

In this episode, Oliver and Peter from Scott Logic are joined by Laura Bell Main, CEO and co-founder of SafeStack, for a lively discussion on DevSecOps. They touch on techniques such as "assume breach" and "shift left", and the relationship to DevOps, which is trying to solve a similar problem. However, much of the discussion focused quite simply on security and the challenges this presents, especially when this so often falls to a very small team or an individual. Laura mentioned OneHourAppSec at the end of the recording. It's a free appsec program that helps software teams worldwide bring security to their software development lifecycle in just one hour per sprint. You can join at any time, from anywhere. She'd love you to check it out. Links from the podcast: The Assume Breach Paradigm Shift left vs shift right: A DevOps mystery solved

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Chris Price and James Heward for a lively debate on whether the latest advances in generative AI are going to threaten our jobs – are we going to be made redundant by our own creation? The discussion starts with a quick summary of the latest advances in AI, and considers the nascent reasoning capabilities these models exhibit. The discussion then explores the various tasks and roles required to build software applications, and considers the impact this technology will have. Links from the podcast: AI is morphing from tool to platform (and the next technology epoch begins) – some personal reflections on the impact of this technology Catching up with OpenAI – a quick update on the most recent advances and research from OpenAI An OpenAI API primer – a three-part series that covers explores the API, explaining concepts such as few-shot learning Sam Altman: OpenAI CEO on GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the Future of AI – Lex Fridman and Sam Altman chat about the future of AI Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 – Researchers find that GPT4 is more than just a text generation engine

In this episode – the first of a two-parter – Colin Eberhardt and Oliver Cronk talk to Denis Mandich, CTO of Qrypt, a company that creates quantum-secure encryption products. Denis is also a physicist and has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Quantum Computing. Their conversation covers the physics that underpins this technology, including the strange concepts of superposition and entanglement. They cover the practical aspects of cloud-based Quantum Computers and what can be achieved today through circuit design. Finally, they look to the future to discuss the impact this breakthrough technology is likely to have. Links from the podcast: Qrypt – the company where Denis is CTO Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe – a fantastic lecture from the Royal Institution that gives a detailed, yet accessible, introduction to Quantum physics Einstein's "Spooky Action at a Distance" Paradox Older Than Thought – some good background on the Einstein quote Qiskit – IBM's open source toolkit for creating quantum circuits

In this episode, Colin Eberhardt is joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Peter Chamberlin and Chris Price for a lively discussion about blockchain. They start by looking at the mechanics of bitcoin and the economic incentive model formed by proof of work consensus. From there, they discuss enterprise or permission blockchain, which leads them to discuss some specific use cases – for example, the oil market supply-chain challenges. They also discuss technologies which are blockchain-like, but prefer not to use that term. Finally, they ask themselves the question, is blockchain just hype? Spoiler alert: for the most part the answer is yes – this is hype! Links from the podcast: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – Satoshi Nakamoto The DAO Video: Streamlining physical energy post-trade processes – Etienne Amic (CEO Vakt.io) Building the first enterprise blockchain platform – Lucy Kurian & Shodhan Sheth Certificate Transparency